Stone Breasts Survive Lightning Strike

In what seems like a precision strike, a lightning bolt crashed down from the skies over Australia into a voluptuous Venus de Milo statue, with the breasts the only part of the torso surviving intact.

On Jan. 4 Tom Finlay, the stonemasonry head at Finlay's Stonemasonry in Yarrawonga, Australia, was standing in the courtyard when the white flash came from the sky, striking the nearly 5-foot-tall statue he had hand-carved.

"There was a clap of thunder and the sculpture blew up like a rocket-launcher had hit it," he told the NT News. "The lightning looked like a serpent. Everything disintegrated but the breasts -all that's left is what's under her hips."

The statue's 66-pound stone breasts fell over 26 feet from the steel column it was perched atop, but miraculously did not shatter. The NT News reported that only one nipple was damaged.

Finlay said that he isn't sure what to do with the surviving bosom.

"It's still a bit raw," he said. "I'll leave the statue the way it is to show the force of nature … I might mount [the breasts] and hang them in my office."